


Fishing

by therev



Series: The Holodeck [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4494144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock joins McCoy on the holodeck. There's talking and fishing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fishing

The worm wiggled helplessly on the hook.

"I know how you feel, buddy," Leonard McCoy said to it, then threw out his line. He sat on the end of the dock, his feet submerged in the murky water, and listened to the crickets, the frogs, the wind through pines. It was nearly sunset.

"Is it not illogical, Doctor," Spock asked, standing next to him on the dock, "to try to catch game which can neither be eaten nor even removed from the holodeck as it does not actually exist?" Leonard had heard him approach several minutes before and had been, until then, doing a pretty good job of ignoring him.

"The point isn't really to catch the fish," he said.

"Then your actions are even more illogical than I thought."

"The point, Spock, is to sit on a dock on the edge of a stream on a warm summer evening and try to forget that you're however many light years from home."

"From Earth, the approximate distance is--"

"Don't kick a man when he's down, Spock."

Spock inclined his head in that precise way that Leonard had come to recognize as conceding the point if not entirely understanding it.

"C'mon," Leonard said, and patted the boards next to him. They were still warm from the sun, a simulation, he knew, but he could be fooled when he really wanted to be. "Have a seat."

Spock considered the worn boards, then crossed his feet and lowered himself effortlessly to sit cross-legged next to Leonard. Leonard smiled but didn't comment.

"Was there something you needed?" Leonard asked. 

Spock looked thoughtful. 

"From me, I mean," Leonard amended, just in case the question was inviting more answers than he could handle just then. "It's pretty late for your shift. Shouldn't you be meditating, seeking the knowledge within or counting atoms or whatever goes on in that head of yours?"

One eyebrow arched into Spock's hairline though Spock didn't look at him. "I had a dream about you, Doctor."

There was a noise in the water, the kind of quiet 'kerplunk' that comes and goes constantly on a busy stream, but Leonard made a fuss of checking his line anyway. 

"Oh yeah?" he asked. "Did I kill the whole crew treating them for the common cold? Maybe I turned Chekov into a Frankenstein's monster? Bolts in the neck and all of that?"

Spock shook his head but didn't offer any other information and the sound of crickets filled the silence as Leonard settled his line back into the water.

"Is there a reason you're not wearing shoes?" Spock asked after a few minutes.

Leonard shrugged, lifted his feet dripping out of the water, wiggled his toes, dipped them back in. "I could try to explain it, Spock, or you could see for yourself."

To his surprise, Spock uncrossed his legs, pulled off his Starfleet issue boots and socks, rolled up his pants legs to match Leonard's. His feet were tinged green like the rest of him, maybe even more so than some parts, the veins closer to the surface, covered in little dark hairs, also like the rest of him. Leonard had probably seen them before but he couldn't remember it. 

"The water is surprisingly cool," Spock said, hesitating, wetting them a little at a time. "I did not expect that."

"The evening's full of surprises," Leonard said and smiled, thinking of the fact that the ship's science officer and resident Vulcan was sitting next to him barefoot, but Spock only gave him a strange look so he watched the water instead, his smile withering. "So, uh, I didn't know Vulcans dreamed. I thought your people would have eliminated such an illogical function of the mind."

"REM sleep, as you know, is important for mental and physical health and stimulates regions of the brain used in learning."

"In humans, sure."

"In Vulcans as well."

"I was really just teasing you anyway, Spock."

"Of course, but while you also know that we Vulcans find meditation more restful than sleep, our minds and bodies do require it."

"Okay, then, what do Vulcans dream about? Math?" He smiled again and Spock, who seemed to have shifted closer though he didn't remember that happening, only looked very serious. He sighed.

"The same sorts of things humans dream about, I believe. I've read about human dreams. Ours are equally as illogical."

"No wonder you find meditation more restful."

"Precisely, Doctor."

They fell silent again. The sun was starting to set and the sky was getting darker, pinker, shot through with blue and purple and impossible yellows that were close to but not quite as pretty as home. His line bobbed and he raised the pole but there was nothing there. Even the worm was gone. Farewell, holo-worm buddy.

"I don't suppose you've ever fished, Spock?" he asked, sliding the pole behind him onto the dock. He pulled in his line, digging through the bucket beside him for another earthworm, the smell of the soil almost overwhelming, for all the memories it held. "Being vegetarian and all?"

"I have not, but as these are not real fish, and that is not a real worm you're stabbing with that hook, I would not be opposed to, as you say, giving it a go."

"Really?"

Spock nodded and Leonard handed over the pole, a fourteen-foot piece of the prettiest cane a hologram-generator could manage, showed him how to hold it, what to do if he felt a tug on the line. Spock looked stiff at first, but soon relaxed when nothing more happened than the stream whispering by and bugs landing and flying off of the surface of the water. Leonard leaned back on his hands behind him, watching the sky.

"Have you ever seen a sunset on Earth?" he asked.

"Have you ever seen a sunset on Vulcan?" Spock countered, looking only slightly over his shoulder at Leonard, eyes on the line in case something happened, so that Leonard's eyeroll benefited no one but himself.

"Fair point, Mr. Spock," he said. "Is it as pretty as this?" The question was asked before he remembered, even though, really, how could he forget. But Spock didn't look stricken at the reminder of his lost home planet. He simply looked up, considering the sky.

"Our Vulcan sunsets were far more beautiful," he said, "although the colors were not dissimilar. Perhaps, redder, deeper."

"Sorry, Spock." Leonard sat up to place a hand on Spock's shoulder. "That was stupid of me."

"Not at all," Spock said calmly, with that look again just over his shoulder, dark eyes on Leonard's hand there so that Leonard removed it, feeling a bit chastised. "You asked as honestly as I answered, although perhaps my memory is colored with sentimentality."

"I didn't think you capable of that," Leonard said softly, an attempt at baiting that came out too gentle. But Spock smiled a little, not quite that 'I've been right all along and now everyone knows it' smile, but close.

"Vulcans are capable of many things of which humans might not know or guess."

"Like dreaming?" Leonard asked. He leaned back again, as if the question hardly mattered. "What could your vastly capable Vulcan mind have found so disturbing in that dream of yours that you had to seek me out?"

"Perhaps that is only my business, Doctor."

"Then why mention it at all?"

There was another noise in the water, the cane rose and fell, rose again and then Spock stood. Leonard sat up. There, on the end of the line, wriggling for its manufactured simulation of life, was a fish.

"Why, you… I can't believe you caught one!" Leonard said, loud enough that a few birds flew from the trees near the shore. Spock swung the line to land the fish next to Leonard on the dock where it flopped as uncertainly as Spock stood there looking down at it. It was a decent sized trout and it was slippery, but Leonard was determined to get it off of the hook and back into the water as soon as possible, if not for it's pretend life, for the look on Spock's face. 

"There," he said when he slipped it back into the water, "he's fine, see?" He rinsed his hands and wiped them on his pants. Spock was still standing, waiting for something more to happen. Leonard reached up to him, took his hand to pull him back down. Spock sat, after Leonard pushed the pole and line and hook out of the way, and they were definitely closer, even though Spock had surely sat in a puddle of water.

"I do not like fishing, Leonard."

"Yeah, I can see that. But I've been fishing in this simulated stream for years and never caught anything. You must have charmed it onto the line with some telepathic link."

Spock leaned over to look down into the water, maybe to be sure the trout had really swam away. "Perhaps you simply never expected to catch anything. This place is, after all, designed to meet an individual's expectations and desires."

"But it's programming, not-- hey, you called me Leonard."

"Is that not your name?" Spock asked.

"Well it ain't 'Doctor'."

"I could refrain in the future from--"

"No, no, Spock… that's alright, it was just… surprising." It really was, like a lot of things tonight. Like fishing with the science officer and Vulcan feet and talk of dreams…. He laughed, light as the wind over the water. "You know, I'm not entirely certain now that I'm not dreaming."

That earned him another elevated brow; he could see it even in the half light of the evening, the sun now just outlining the trees on the opposite bank. "You mean currently?"

"Yeah, I mean… I'm not, right? But then, if I'm not, why are you here, Spock?"

Spock crossed his arms and the sudden distance between them must have been imagined. "I believe I've told you that, doctor."

"Yeah, so you had a dream. So what? Woke you up, I guess?" That was it. Maybe now he understood. "Do you want a sedative to help you sleep?"

"No, Doctor."

"You're not helping me out here, Spock. The only reasons people--or other entities," he corrected when Spock seemed about to interrupt him, "seek out other people or entities when they have bad dreams is for assistance returning to sleep... or for comfort."

Spock was not looking at him, he was looking at the water, at his own feet in the water. The currents moved the little black hairs there and a minnow nibbled at his toe. Leonard tried to will him to look up, look at him with those dark eyes that often infuriated him for all the passion he saw there, at odds with the calm, calculated front.

"Spock…" Leonard began, feeling a little foolish.

"I dreamed that you died, doctor. It seemed very real. I was compelled to seek you out, to prove to myself it was only a dream, even though, logically, I knew it to be so." He looked at Leonard finally, calmly. He might have been reporting the weather.

Leonard attempted a smile. "Well I guess I can understand that, I mean…" He coughed. Spock was still watching him. "So now you're certain it was just a dream, then? See? I'm fine?" He patted his chest and Spock nodded. The sun had set completely, the sky growing darker. A whippoorwill began to call from the shore.

"Are you still uncertain?" Spock asked after a few moments. 

"Uncertain of what?"

Night was falling faster than it should have on Earth. A few stars sparkled overhead. He imagined that one of them could have even been Vulcan, once upon a time. 

"Uncertain that you aren't actually dreaming?"

Dark eyes watched him closely, something in them seemed to move like the current.

"Come to think of it, Mr. Spock, I might be more uncertain than ever."


End file.
